Happy New Year - the Julia Calendar

I start my year on my birthday. The Julia Calendar is far more reasonable than the Julian. It’s silly to try to start some brand new habit on January 1st. We’ve all been in the national orgy of holidays and celebrations and travel and general unrest. My birthday, today, is close enough to the beginning of the year to still feel new, clear, with a bite of winter.

I had random ideas for this past year, but I couldn’t have planned it. In fact, I didn’t. I tried. I kept coming up with The Plan and then changing it. What happened this year wasn’t so much about what I did or where I went, but about taking the time to just be. I can’t explain easily what that did for me, but I can tell you the resolutions it gave me for the new year.

New Year’s Resolutions

• Keep writing. I finished a novel this year. I started another one. I’ve got a third brewing in my brain. Ideas for a fifth and a sixth….
• Keep interviewing people. I love talking to them about their lives, their work, their dreams. Yes, please.
• Keep traveling. I must return to Edinburgh. Period. Other places too. And not “some day.” Soon.
• Keep being curious. About life, about myself.
• Keep being passionate about what I love, no matter how random. Color. "That’s not even a thing," you say. It is. It is.
• Keep giving myself space to be the person I am.

It’s been an enlightening year. A year ago, the Monday after my last birthday, I resigned from my job to take a year-long sabbatical. I’d decided that one day wasn’t enough to celebrate a half century.

This whole year has been a celebration of this birthday. The sabbatical has ended, but The Bliss Tour continues.

Goodbye Portobello

Sunrise from the kitchen

View from the bed

Today is my last day at the beach, Portobello. I've been here for five and a half mostly bright sunny weeks, watching puppies and toddlers gambol by with their adult humans, bikers, joggers, swimmers braving the North Sea (as a reference point: it's colder than Barton Springs by at least 10 degrees), and the tide rise and fall.

I'm sad to leave the beach, but I'm staying in Edinburgh until just before Thanksgiving. I love it here. I'm moving to the Leith area, closer to the City Center, and returning this beach flat to my host, who's been staying with friends while I enjoyed a few more weeks in his home. He's a really nice man.

Things I'll miss: the sound of the waves, the view from the table at the window where I spent much of my time, the fish and chips, the Espy which I finally ventured into when Elisa visited, familiar faces.

I'm looking forward to the rest of my stay and seeing how the location change will affect what I do daily. Probably no walks on the beach, but I'll walk somewhere else, discover something new, be grateful I'm here.

The North Sea

Light from my bedroom

The light

The Plan*

What’s The Plan?

Ha! Ok, you can start laughing now. “The Plan” has changed three times. Four times, if you count The Plan before I started the blog. The Plan this year is a work in progress.

Initially, I planned to do an Eat Pray Love: sell everything and go live in different places for 3-4 months each. Paris was always at the top of the list. Then it because an epic road trip on the west coast, then a short story road trip, but I cancelled that. Or maybe it’s just postponed?

Now I might road trip to my family reunion in Panama City, Florida. Stop in New Orleans, where I’d sworn never to visit in the summer again. Or I may fly to Panama City. I don’t know.

Ahhh... Paris. I don't think I'm going there.

My lease it up August 20, and now The Plan is back to: sell everything and move some place for 3-4 months. Move where you ask? Move to… wait for it… Scotland!

No, I don’t know where that came from either. What happened to Paris? I’ve been dreaming of living in Paris for months! But now? Not so much.

I could give you logical reasons why I’m now looking at Scotland: it’s a smaller city (I don’t love huge cities; that’s why I came to Austin from Brooklyn); it’s cheaper than Paris, and definitely cheaper than London; Scotland is English-speaking, although I’ve heard from some that this point may be debatable.

All of these things are true (apparently, I haven’t made any actual plans yet), but the real reason is that Scotland popped into my head and I’m just going to go with it. Notice I keep saying Scotland. Scotland isn’t a city, like Paris or London. It’s a whole country. So like, Edinborgh? Edinburg? Edinburough? Ok. I’ll have to learn to spell it.

Know anyone in Scotland?

*subject to change